6 Tips To Increase Last-Minute Holiday Sales For Your Indoor Playground

As we approach “crunch time” for last-minute holiday shoppers, I wanted to give you some last minute tips for all of your holiday sales and promotions. Because even though we are well past black friday and small business Saturday now, there is still PLENTY of time for holiday shopping and I want to make sure you are NOT leaving any money on the table. 

For a lot of areas fall and early winter were unseasonably mild weather-wise and that means revenue may have been down, so this is a great time to get those accounts back up, give yourself a nice holiday bonus, and even start saving for the next slow season.

Now I already have a TON of episodes and youtube videos about holiday ticketed events, vendor sip and shops, and sales and promotions and all that and if you follow me on instagram I posted a holiday episode roundup so you can binge all holiday related episodes at your leisure but today I wanted to share a few more specific strategies that have really been working RIGHT NOW for owners specifically around bigger ticket items like annual memberships and larger offerings like summer camp passes and packs of play passes.

Basically what parents mean when they say they’d rather their child be gifted experiences and not THINGS or toys or clutter. Things that aunts, uncles, grandparents, people like that may be in the market for this holiday season.

Alright without further adieu here are some timely tips to make more high-ticket gift sales THIS holiday season:

1) Don't Focus ONLY On Price

So specifically for memberships I see a lot of owners really going hard on discounts and value and in their graphics doing the math and saying things like, “get 20 visits for the price of 10” or “becoming a member saves you $X per visit”. And all of that is well and good, but if someone is scrolling social media looking to buy a gift for a parent, especially a new parent or someone new to your area who hasn’t been to your space yet and so they didn’t know to ask for a play pass package or membership, saving or a big discount really means nothing because they haven’t been sold on your business yet. And people get really burned out on discounts after seeing them all season from every business EVER.

So this holiday season do NOT forget those people who are looking to buy for the parents on their list and don’t know about your business yet.

You have to still sell the experience on TOP of the value of your offer.

So creating posts or ads that say things like “ the best gift for new parents”, or “be the person to gift the thing the parents in your life will use the most this year”, or you can get a little cheeky and say things like “give that parent in your life what they really need– their sanity back” or you can get more sentimental by saying things like “give the parents in your life the community they need”, which can be especially attractive if the grandparent or relative buying the gift is from out of town and isn’t able to be that community in their loved ones life. 

And if you’re doing longer form ads or video ads– again, don’t just shout out discounts that will end up being white noise. Paint the picture for them.

Say–

“Picture this. You’re a parent of two toddlers. It’s 8am and you feel like you’ve already been through a war. You desperately need a moment to yourself but nothing will occupy your kids today for more than 5 minutes.

You’ve already offered a meal and 2 snacks and no one’s eaten any of it except your family dog. Imagine that in that moment– there’s a place you can go. You know the people there and you feel comfortable enough to show up as you are, even though you haven’t showered in days. You are a member, so you can just walk in, you don’t even have to pay.

You can drink hot coffee and order some snacks that someone ELSE prepares. Your kids can meet new friends to socialize with and occupy them and they can get their wiggles out before nap time later. You get to chat and commiserate with other parents and just have a minute to decompress and answer some emails or order those holiday cards.  And when you’re back to neutral you can head back home, refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the day.”

Showcasing the true value your business provides to the parents you serve can be so crucial during this time because people who are from different generations or who don’t have kids might not GET IT unless you are very explicit with them. 

So the key here is to NOT just focus on price and that sort of value, but rather take a step back and not assume everyone already knows why a gift certificate to your place even makes a great gift in the first place. Because without THAT value already cemented in the gifters mind, price doesn’t really matter. You could be giving gift cards for 90% off and they still wouldn’t buy because they don’t see WHY you should have a piece of their holiday budget.

2) Consider Collaboration

I have tons of episodes on doing bundle sales like Profitable Play episode 26 and episode 254 among others but when you are creating your “bundle” of offers that you then mark down, consider involving other complementary businesses. For example, if your bundle includes event passes for things like kids night out– consider contacting a local friendly restaurant that might want to include a gift card so that parents have somewhere to GO when they drop their kids off.

Or if your bundle includes open play but you don’t have a cafe, reach out to a local bakery or coffee shop to see if you could include something of theirs– whether it’s a bag of beans for something tangible or a gift card. 

And I’m not inferring you should ask for these things for FREE– you could do a swap! So they could include play passes to YOUR space in a sale of theirs and you can both benefit. 

Not only will this increase the value and appeal of your bundle, the increased reach and visibility (assuming that you mutually share this collaboration on your social channels and with your email lists) will ALSO work to increase sales and give your promotion a nice boost.

Plus, people love seeing small local businesses work together, so it can give you that community goodwill benefit as well and maybe even create a partner for collaborations for the life of your business which will be undoubtedly valuable throughout the years to come.

3) Catch Your Audience’s Attention

I have talked about this time and time again but do NOT overuse boring graphics on your feeds, especially on Instagram.

Every single business EVER has a Canva account or something similar and every business EVER utilizes graphics– many because they are solely online or more information based businesses.

But indoor play spaces have a MAJOR advantage when it comes to marketing that many sleep on and that is how VISUALLY APPEALING their spaces are.

Your space is recognizable not just to people who have been there but to ANYONE with kids– I know that if I am scrolling and I see any kids play structure or imaginative set up I need to know more because that's what parents have top-of-mind all the time… HOW can I keep my kids busy and active and growing and socializing!

ANY kids-focused item or space equals an immediate scroll stop.

So WHY are we cluttering our feeds with graphics that every other business ever uses and end up just being white noise? I get it– a lot of people think “oh well, I have to get all this information to fit on this little square for my feed, of course I’m going to use a graphic”--

But you really do NOT need to do that and I think that mindset is really holding many businesses' marketing efforts back.

I think it’s easy to forget that not only do you have the CAPTION available to add in any details like an event day time etc.-- but you also have the opportunity to post a multi-slide carousel and carousels have been proven to perform BETTER than one-slide static posts.

Instead of trying to cram everything into a single graphic which will not only become white noise in the feed but also will be really lost in your IG grid because the words will be way to small to read from your profile–

I would instead do a multi slide carousel where the first slide is a really eye catching photo of your play area with maybe one or two words in big bold letters in a nice clean font (because don’t even get me started on the use of cursives and hard to read fonts on graphics)– so maybe SANTA EVENT or something similar– something that will catch the attention of your potential audience as they scroll – and then use the OTHER space available. 

Use one slide to state the time, another for the event description, another with a call to action– and USE THE CAPTION. If someone is interested they WILL look for more info and the caption is RIGHT there for them to expand. 

The TRICK most people miss is that you need to GET people's attention first– and I'm telling you– a graphic made from a template that every single other business is also using WILL NOT CUT IT. 

4) Advertise in Unusual Places

This one is pretty straightforward but don’t forget that during the holiday season, it’s not JUST parents of small children who will be interested in buying from you. This is the time of year you really need to expand BEYOND your core customer and think about who will actually be doing the buying for THEM.

So– grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc–

And that means you also need to think outside the box in terms of where you are advertising your promotions. So if there are local businesses that these people might follow that wouldn’t normally make sense for a collaboration or cross promotion– maybe boutiques, diners, adult health services, print newspapers or magazines– these might be a great opportunity for you right now.

And I’m not saying you need to bundle your services together like I was suggesting earlier in the episode, it can be as simple as you each sharing a post about the other business on your respective social media pages.

Because YOU want to reach THEIR target audience before the holidays which means THEY want to reach yours– because your customers who are parents will also be shopping for the people who will be buying gifts for THEM– and so on and so forth– you get the idea.

So open your mind to advertising or cross promotion opportunities you wouldn’t normally look to to get the word out.

5) Offer payment plans 

I LOVE offering payment plans for high ticket items like annual memberships. And you might be thinking, “Michele, isn’t the whole point of an annual membership to get ONE lump sum? And isn’t allowing a payment plan for an annual membership literally the same thing as instead selling a normal month to month membership?”

And the answer is no, not necessarily.

One business that does this really well that I’ll use as an example is EWC. They sell annual wax passes that allow you to save 25% on each wax and you get one wax per month for a year. You can pay all at once of course, but what most people do is a 3 month payment plan. So you pay the lump sum off in 3 months instead of in 12 like you would for a monthly membership, and you then get to enjoy that 25% savings.

So the business has the benefit of collecting the money quicker– so 3 months instead of 12– and the customer gets the benefit of not having that huge payment all at once.

Now I have tried using Klarna and Afterpay to offer similar things for your customers so they can buy your annual memberships or summer camps but pay over time but honestly I have not loved working with those platforms so if you can keep the payment plan in-house on YOUR processor, do it.

People have a lot on their financial plate right now and they are buying gifts for a LOT of people. So allowing them to buy something BIG and grand like an annual membership while still allowing them to divide up the payments can really help get you a major boost in sales. And that way you have less of a risk of a payment failing and having to chase missed payments or switching the account over to the parent.

So I would really consider a short 3-4 month payment plan for your bigger ticket items such as annual passes or even 10 packs of play passes.

6) Think Outside Box 

Speaking of higher ticket items, if you haven't looked at unique opportunities for last minute gifts, now’s the time. 

Even if you don’t have your summer camp calendar 100% ironed out yet– consider offering summer camp gift cards. So a grandparent or whoever doesn’t need to choose a specific date time or theme, but they can still gift something a little more thoughtful and personal than a generic gift card.

You can design a really cute branded certificate you can send to buyers using a free canva account so you don’t have to get crazy fancy or high production here. You can keep it simple. Especially because by now people are looking for more last-minute, instant-access gifts they can get in their email and print out or even send via text.

So if you have things like a series of classes, do a gift card that covers any 6 week class series. Or a gift card to use towards a birthday party. Or maybe a coffee specific gift card so the parents can treat themselves each visit– which will be perfect for any parent who already has play passes or a monthly membership they pay for. Most parents feel guilty spending money on themselves so if you create a 10 pack of coffee gift card or something similar, it creates a thoughtful gift that the parents HAVE to use on themselves.

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